I was under the assumption that a payent was the actual mechanics of and building of the effect. The copyright is the actual words used in the effect. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Steven

Is everybody serious here? After the multitudes of threads across the net, magazine articles, lectures and videos.. nobody still has a laymen understanding of what 'copyright' is?

You know duping a dvd or downloading a torrent of something not in the public domain is actually illegal, right?

The best advice here is to contact an attorney who deals in creative licensing or even just a copyright attorney.

The second basic point is: an idea is not protected by copyright, but the specific execution of an idea is. For instance, the concept of a 'logo' is not something anybody or company can trademark or copyright. The specific Nike swoosh is. Not a swoosh in general, but the specific swoosh Nike uses, as a logo, is.

Concept here means the definition of what a logo is: A graphic mark that is used to identify a company, product or personality. (essentially)

The idea of making a ball vanish is not copyright-able, nor is a card moving, a lady being sawed in half or even a principle such as a Svengali deck.

It usually comes down to execution of a principle/idea. If already you can "Jay Sankey's (fill in the blank)" then that's an easy indicator you need to call someone.

As Jay is a master of, repackaging older effects and slapping your name on them, such as Astral Projection, is what half the stuff seems to be anyway. In Astral, the only thing actually copyrighted would be the name, packaging design and perhaps his actual routine (read: patter).

Just an opinion here folks. In this day and age, people are looking for reason to sue.

If you can find multitudes of the same thing (Svegali decks for instance) chances are it is in the public domain but even still researching copyright and patents, if there are 'plans' involved in building something would provide the most helpful.

Thumbslinger-
I agree with your best advice- if I was serious, I'd certainly contact an attorney. However, just wanted to get other thoughts- different countries have different levels of protection- i.e. Downloading of videos & music cannot be prosecuted in Canada, but certainly can in USA. That being said, I'm not an advocate to go download to your heart's content- I still strongly believe in supporting the artists that make the work.
But all in all I agree with what you said Thumbslinger.

Thanks for replies WOW!

I live in UK Wales, does anyone know of a wholesale in UK?

Thanks for clearing that up for me thumbslinger. I was not sure. So thank you for the correction. Now I have to go and check my dowmloads...that Batman movie is taking forever.......Just kidding.

Steven